NortheastDJs
Hey guys, I am running two mac systems - I have a brand new MacBook Pro 15" 2.8 ghz intel core 2 duo, 4 gig memory, 500 gig hard drive, NVidia GeForce 9400M with 512MB.
I also have a 24" iMac - 2.93 ghz intel core 2 duo, 4 gig memory, 1TB drive, NVidia GeForce GT130 512MB.
On my laptop I am running VDJ 6.02 and on my iMac I updated to 6.03 (thinking that might have been the problem). However, when I run videos they are incredibly choppy. The CPU meter is only at half way while running video so it's not being bogged down. I can run one channel of video and it looks and plays fine. Once I hit play on the second channel things become very slow and very choppy. Can't use any transitions because it becomes unbearable. Again, the CPU meter is at half way while this is happening as well.
I'm new to using Videos - I haven't taken any shows live yet .. but of course I want to.
Latency is set to auto.
Any suggestions? Please help!
I also have a 24" iMac - 2.93 ghz intel core 2 duo, 4 gig memory, 1TB drive, NVidia GeForce GT130 512MB.
On my laptop I am running VDJ 6.02 and on my iMac I updated to 6.03 (thinking that might have been the problem). However, when I run videos they are incredibly choppy. The CPU meter is only at half way while running video so it's not being bogged down. I can run one channel of video and it looks and plays fine. Once I hit play on the second channel things become very slow and very choppy. Can't use any transitions because it becomes unbearable. Again, the CPU meter is at half way while this is happening as well.
I'm new to using Videos - I haven't taken any shows live yet .. but of course I want to.
Latency is set to auto.
Any suggestions? Please help!
Posté Tue 24 Nov 09 @ 6:44 am
soquickwitit
Dude. Me too. Both on windows and mac. I have same memory n processor as u. This sux. I've tried messing with the settings. Please someone help us!!! I have gigs the next 4 days in a row
Posté Wed 25 Nov 09 @ 6:04 pm
DJ Cyder
Try a different skin without video preview windows, not the default, see my comments on the 6.03 thread let me know your results.
Posté Wed 25 Nov 09 @ 11:56 pm
Reventon
You are not the only one with that problem. My $3k MBP is choppy when it comes to high quality videos. Standard definition videos play fine, its when you try to load anything near HD quality. Any work around this?
Posté Mon 28 Dec 09 @ 12:05 am
Reventon
No solution huh?
Posté Wed 30 Dec 09 @ 12:35 am
Caliente123
I have freezing video with My macbook pro running Mac OS & Bootcamp XP. I did everything and i found no solution. I was hoping to use my VCI 300 & dj videos for New Years.. Maybe next year..
Macbook Pro
2.4 Core 2 Duo
4 gigs of Ram
320 Gig 7200 Rpm Hd
8600m GT Video card
Macbook Pro
2.4 Core 2 Duo
4 gigs of Ram
320 Gig 7200 Rpm Hd
8600m GT Video card
Posté Wed 30 Dec 09 @ 5:40 pm
Nemisius
What is the format of the video?
What is the resolution of the video? 640x480, 720x480, 1280x720 etc
Are you using the VDJ internal video codec or have you tried to select the available native application for processing from the preference>codecs tab?
Are you running any other applications in the background?
Try to be as specific as possible so the Mac guys at VDJ have as much information as possible or trials and testing.
I have personally found setting up mp4 and m4v to use quicktime as the decoder and the latest version after 6.05 to be faster on my old macbook pro 1.83 to be better but not perfect.
Just some food for thought and troubleshooting
What is the resolution of the video? 640x480, 720x480, 1280x720 etc
Are you using the VDJ internal video codec or have you tried to select the available native application for processing from the preference>codecs tab?
Are you running any other applications in the background?
Try to be as specific as possible so the Mac guys at VDJ have as much information as possible or trials and testing.
I have personally found setting up mp4 and m4v to use quicktime as the decoder and the latest version after 6.05 to be faster on my old macbook pro 1.83 to be better but not perfect.
Just some food for thought and troubleshooting
Posté Wed 13 Jan 10 @ 10:30 pm
Nemisius
I miss spoke about the video codec - keep it on internal video decoder not quicktime as it will error -
Mine switched back by itself and after uninstalling and reinstalling behaved this way.
I also found that Cyder's tip helps - use a screen without previews but running 2 720x480 H264 videos causes major lagging.
Not using any effects on the transition helps.
Using the trial version (and it's non resizable window) on virtualdj_djc_v5.2.2 works better with 2 video's playing
and both versions are not effected and are not effected negatively by other programs running video. ie MegaSeg plays fine and outputs fine.
This leads me back to the coding of the program and nothing else.
I'm kinda bummed about this as it seems that even if I buy a brand new Macbook Pro I'm still going to have the same issues and I really don't want to have to buy a PC just to use this software for VJ work.
Mine switched back by itself and after uninstalling and reinstalling behaved this way.
I also found that Cyder's tip helps - use a screen without previews but running 2 720x480 H264 videos causes major lagging.
Not using any effects on the transition helps.
Using the trial version (and it's non resizable window) on virtualdj_djc_v5.2.2 works better with 2 video's playing
and both versions are not effected and are not effected negatively by other programs running video. ie MegaSeg plays fine and outputs fine.
This leads me back to the coding of the program and nothing else.
I'm kinda bummed about this as it seems that even if I buy a brand new Macbook Pro I'm still going to have the same issues and I really don't want to have to buy a PC just to use this software for VJ work.
Posté Mon 08 Feb 10 @ 8:52 am
Nemisius
Started to play around with this again. Opened Activity Monitor (Applications>Utilities>Activity Monitor) and killed a few non essential processes.
Ran Virtual DJ and set up 2 m4v videos and did not use a video skin. Got them to play on my Macbook Pro 18.3 intel core duo at the same time! Mixing with effects is right out and the interface slows as does the video output.
Processor use goes through the roof and Activity monitor reports 100% CPU usage, 1.3gb memory available and that virtual DJ is using about 200mb of RAM with 180mb of Virtual RAM.
A few things I find alarming:
1. VDJ seems to use under 200mb of RAM and does not or can not be offered more.
2. VDJ will use virtual RAM ( much slower) even with the option to use actual RAM in it's place.
3. VDJ does not seem to be using the video card or it's resources for decoding instead relying on the CPU for decoding.
I tried the demo on a mac mini 2Ghz Core 2 Duo with an intel GMA950 64mb shared and got better performance but have not tried this test.
My suggestions to the mac programmers at Atomix is to allow VDJ to make better use of available Memory and less use of virtual memory if possible. Also the internal video decoder needs to be optimized and should make use of apple's own video resources.
Ran Virtual DJ and set up 2 m4v videos and did not use a video skin. Got them to play on my Macbook Pro 18.3 intel core duo at the same time! Mixing with effects is right out and the interface slows as does the video output.
Processor use goes through the roof and Activity monitor reports 100% CPU usage, 1.3gb memory available and that virtual DJ is using about 200mb of RAM with 180mb of Virtual RAM.
A few things I find alarming:
1. VDJ seems to use under 200mb of RAM and does not or can not be offered more.
2. VDJ will use virtual RAM ( much slower) even with the option to use actual RAM in it's place.
3. VDJ does not seem to be using the video card or it's resources for decoding instead relying on the CPU for decoding.
I tried the demo on a mac mini 2Ghz Core 2 Duo with an intel GMA950 64mb shared and got better performance but have not tried this test.
My suggestions to the mac programmers at Atomix is to allow VDJ to make better use of available Memory and less use of virtual memory if possible. Also the internal video decoder needs to be optimized and should make use of apple's own video resources.
Posté Wed 10 Feb 10 @ 9:26 am
BOBOY13
i already experience this kind of problem dont use HD resolution,when you play music video try to look for video that the resolution is 640X.... and the frame rate is 29.97(NTSC)... Im using MAC PRO.i5 2.66ghz dual core !!
Posté Tue 24 May 11 @ 6:23 pm
rahouston
Is anyone having any luck using the video portion of Virtual DJ? I bought Virtual DJ for this and I ended up buying a bad ass laptop just to find out its not the laptop. I even installed a SSD Drive instead of the standard HDD. I have an Intel Core i7 with 8g of ram. These choppy videos suck. I am going to try a G Raid drive because some people tell me that Virtual DJ cant access the files fast enough. Any help would be greatly appreciated, Ron
Posté Thu 13 Oct 11 @ 11:22 pm
abayardepr
thanks for telling me that my 13" Macbook does not have to be dumped. I was about to order a top MacBookPro model until I read responses from this thread.
while a satisfactory fix for this comes up, I'll keep using VLC for 1080p videos playback. It works like a charm...
while a satisfactory fix for this comes up, I'll keep using VLC for 1080p videos playback. It works like a charm...
Posté Mon 17 Oct 11 @ 10:49 am
acw_dj
As far as I know is that Video works fine with Lion Mac OS. You can use a Firewire 800 hard drives to get a better response... I suggest you to wait for thunderbold Lacie harddrive to really avoid this problem in access your files from external hard drive. However choppy video is only a real problem when you can see it in this way in your external output. It is normal to could get a little pause when you load songs in VirtualDJ in your working display, but the outside audio and video must be flawlessly.
Posté Tue 18 Oct 11 @ 5:14 am
Supacon
Guys, this clearly has nothing to do with your storage I/O throughput. You can stream 1080p video from YouTube over the Internet on a 5MB/s connection. You certainly don't need a 6Gb/s SATA interface at full speed to handle 200MB of video in 4 minutes.
VDJ seems to have issues with video playback - without knowing much about what's under the hood, I'm guessing that VDJ is trying to use the CPU to decode video -- and even if the CPU is fast enough, it is just not doing a good job of it. I wish there were a solution.
Let's hope that VDJ 8 can handle HD video properly on both Mac and Windows. Windows seems to be better, but I still see tearing and stuttering quite frequently even under Windows with quite powerful computers.
P.S.: At least VDJ does play the audio flawlessly. This situation has certainly improved a lot since version 3.4 which was my first version.
VDJ seems to have issues with video playback - without knowing much about what's under the hood, I'm guessing that VDJ is trying to use the CPU to decode video -- and even if the CPU is fast enough, it is just not doing a good job of it. I wish there were a solution.
Let's hope that VDJ 8 can handle HD video properly on both Mac and Windows. Windows seems to be better, but I still see tearing and stuttering quite frequently even under Windows with quite powerful computers.
P.S.: At least VDJ does play the audio flawlessly. This situation has certainly improved a lot since version 3.4 which was my first version.
Posté Sun 19 Aug 12 @ 6:05 pm
ShizDizDJ
Hey guys... I wanted to put my $0.02 in here. I'm successfully mixing HD video on a 2011 Macbook Air. It's not perfect. There's the occasional brief stutter, but for the most part it works flawlessly. I really think if I got a Mac Pro w/ Retina it would work perfectly.
Here's what I've done and my theories are as to what's happening. Hopefully this will help somewhat.
For what it's worth I also have a 2010 Mac Air and nothing I do will make it work on that. The difference between the two systems is that the 2011 Air has a 1.8Ghz i5 and the 2010 has a 1.4Ghz Core 2 Duo. I had heard that the performance of the i5's was dramatically better and now I really believe it. Also the 2011 model has 4GB of RAM and the 2010 has 2GB.
Ok, here goes...
1.) Create a separate login profile for VJ'ing. This is different from the profile you log into for doing your day to day work.
2.) Once you're in that profile, make sure absolutely NOTHING starts that doesn't need to. So stuff that I turned off for myself included:
- Dropbox
- Evernote
- Cinch
- Alfred
- Time Machine
You may think it's enough to just close all this stuff. It's not. Performance after closing the apps is always subpar to just not starting them at all. To double check what's starting when you log into this profile, go to system preferences > users & groups > login items.
3.) Remove everything from your dock except Virtual DJ. Yes, the performance gains are tiny, but the point is we're saving everywhere we can.
4.) Get rid of your desktop wallpaper and make it a solid color (ie: black). Wallpaper takes up memory space that you don't need to be wasting.
5.) Make sure all your videos are on an external hard drive. This is HUGE. I learned this when I taught myself to edit videos in FCP. Your computer's internal HD is doing enough work to keep the operating system and everything else running. Taxing it with loading & unloading your files will bog down performance.
6.) If you can get a Mac with a solid state drive, do it. When your computer runs out of space in the RAM it starts caching stuff on your hard drive. This usually results in a serious performance drop. SSD drives are a TON faster and handle this type of thing better. I really think this is a huge part of why my Air is able to handle it.
EDIT - ADDITION: 7.) As previously mentioned, use a skin with as small of a footprint as possible. Basically lightweight trumps pretty. You're optimizing for speed. Lighter = faster. Ironically I'm using the skin that came with my Hercules 4MX. It's ugly as hell but seems to be pretty light.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
Based upon what OP said, I really think it's more of a memory issue than it is a processor issue. That makes sense since HD video is so much bigger than SD. Depending on the model of your Mac, you may be able to add more RAM. This would be my number one recommendation for trying to make the problem better.
For reference, I'm an A+ certified computer repair tech and my background is in computer programming. I started DJ'ing after graduating from college and deciding that although I love computers, I really didn't want to deal with them for a living. :-)
Hope this helps!
- Matthew
Here's what I've done and my theories are as to what's happening. Hopefully this will help somewhat.
For what it's worth I also have a 2010 Mac Air and nothing I do will make it work on that. The difference between the two systems is that the 2011 Air has a 1.8Ghz i5 and the 2010 has a 1.4Ghz Core 2 Duo. I had heard that the performance of the i5's was dramatically better and now I really believe it. Also the 2011 model has 4GB of RAM and the 2010 has 2GB.
Ok, here goes...
1.) Create a separate login profile for VJ'ing. This is different from the profile you log into for doing your day to day work.
2.) Once you're in that profile, make sure absolutely NOTHING starts that doesn't need to. So stuff that I turned off for myself included:
- Dropbox
- Evernote
- Cinch
- Alfred
- Time Machine
You may think it's enough to just close all this stuff. It's not. Performance after closing the apps is always subpar to just not starting them at all. To double check what's starting when you log into this profile, go to system preferences > users & groups > login items.
3.) Remove everything from your dock except Virtual DJ. Yes, the performance gains are tiny, but the point is we're saving everywhere we can.
4.) Get rid of your desktop wallpaper and make it a solid color (ie: black). Wallpaper takes up memory space that you don't need to be wasting.
5.) Make sure all your videos are on an external hard drive. This is HUGE. I learned this when I taught myself to edit videos in FCP. Your computer's internal HD is doing enough work to keep the operating system and everything else running. Taxing it with loading & unloading your files will bog down performance.
6.) If you can get a Mac with a solid state drive, do it. When your computer runs out of space in the RAM it starts caching stuff on your hard drive. This usually results in a serious performance drop. SSD drives are a TON faster and handle this type of thing better. I really think this is a huge part of why my Air is able to handle it.
EDIT - ADDITION: 7.) As previously mentioned, use a skin with as small of a footprint as possible. Basically lightweight trumps pretty. You're optimizing for speed. Lighter = faster. Ironically I'm using the skin that came with my Hercules 4MX. It's ugly as hell but seems to be pretty light.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
Based upon what OP said, I really think it's more of a memory issue than it is a processor issue. That makes sense since HD video is so much bigger than SD. Depending on the model of your Mac, you may be able to add more RAM. This would be my number one recommendation for trying to make the problem better.
For reference, I'm an A+ certified computer repair tech and my background is in computer programming. I started DJ'ing after graduating from college and deciding that although I love computers, I really didn't want to deal with them for a living. :-)
Hope this helps!
- Matthew
Posté Wed 22 Aug 12 @ 8:38 pm
Haui70
The best advice with a propper videocard (dedicated videoram min. 256MB better 512MB) is, not to use at the moment 1080p vids.
Use max 720p vids and you will have no problems :-)
Use max 720p vids and you will have no problems :-)
Posté Thu 23 Aug 12 @ 5:49 am
Dj Video Show
Supacon wrote :
Guys, this clearly has nothing to do with your storage I/O throughput. You can stream 1080p video from YouTube over the Internet on a 5MB/s connection. You certainly don't need a 6Gb/s SATA interface at full speed to handle 200MB of video in 4 minutes.
VDJ seems to have issues with video playback - without knowing much about what's under the hood, I'm guessing that VDJ is trying to use the CPU to decode video -- and even if the CPU is fast enough, it is just not doing a good job of it. I wish there were a solution.
Let's hope that VDJ 8 can handle HD video properly on both Mac and Windows. Windows seems to be better, but I still see tearing and stuttering quite frequently even under Windows with quite powerful computers.
P.S.: At least VDJ does play the audio flawlessly. This situation has certainly improved a lot since version 3.4 which was my first version.
VDJ seems to have issues with video playback - without knowing much about what's under the hood, I'm guessing that VDJ is trying to use the CPU to decode video -- and even if the CPU is fast enough, it is just not doing a good job of it. I wish there were a solution.
Let's hope that VDJ 8 can handle HD video properly on both Mac and Windows. Windows seems to be better, but I still see tearing and stuttering quite frequently even under Windows with quite powerful computers.
P.S.: At least VDJ does play the audio flawlessly. This situation has certainly improved a lot since version 3.4 which was my first version.
Guys try this
adjusting a couple of settings and wow works
i followed this guy on u tube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8oQTrDN0wo&feature=related
Jas
Posté Mon 27 Aug 12 @ 5:53 pm
cesarcastillo
jdscooling wrote :
Guys try this
adjusting a couple of settings and wow works
i followed this guy on u tube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8oQTrDN0wo&feature=related
Jas
Guys try this
adjusting a couple of settings and wow works
i followed this guy on u tube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8oQTrDN0wo&feature=related
Jas
Hi Jas, please don't post irrelevant answer that confuses users in this forums, you should post that youtube link on the PC forums not on MAC FORUMS. That video links would probably helps to solve VDJ on WINDOWS OS not on MAC OSX.
Posté Sat 01 Sep 12 @ 10:15 am